Photo courtesy of Caits Meissner for Jellyfish Treasury via WikiMedia Commons
Poet and editor Safia Elhillo, pictured above, was a keynote speaker at this year’s Community Day.
By Sammi Craig ’23 & Tara Monastesse ’25
Staff Writer | News Editor
Tuesday, March 29, was Building On Our Momentum Community Day at Mount Holyoke College. The annual event dedicates one day to panels, presentations and workshops on the subjects of “diversity, equity and inclusion,” according to the College’s website. Students, faculty and staff all encouraged to attend and actively engage in BOOM! events. Events included talks such as “Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at Mount Holyoke: A Dialogue,” in addition to the keynote address titled “Affirmation, Love and Freedom — A Night of Poetry and Dialogue.”
The virtual panel on Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at Mount Holyoke began at 10:30 a.m. and featured “faculty from Critical Social Thought, Africana Studies and Latinx Studies,” according to the College’s website. This panel was a discussion about a submitted proposal to form a new department that merged Critical Social Thought, Africana Studies and Latinx Studies. While there would be one main department, there would be three paths that students can choose within this area of study. As noted during the panel, the paths outlined in the proposal would include “Africana studies, CST, Critical Race and Political Economy.”
The faculty on the panel highlighted how each of the paths overlap and intersect to connect material from classes within and outside of the new department. Another major distinction is that this new department would not be an American-centered program. The merged department would center the history of colonialism within the studies and have a global focus.
The approval of this proposal would mean an overall increase in access to resources for three departments that, separately, do not have as many resources. In addition, students could engage in a wide range of studies while still staying within their major. The faculty advocates expressed hope that the new department merger will be implemented in the Fall 2022 semester.
As the day progressed, community members were able to engage with multiple events during different blocks of time. Some events occurred virtually, while others occurred in person. The final keynote address was held on Zoom and concluded Community Day.
The virtual “Affirmation, Love and Freedom — A Night of Poetry and Dialogue with Fatimah Asghar and Safia Elhillo” closed BOOM! 2022. Fatimah Asghar and Safia Elhillo served as co-editors of the anthology “Halal, If You Hear Me,” a collection of poems that “dispel the notion that there is one correct way to be a Muslim by holding space for multiple, intersecting identities while celebrating and protecting those identities,” according to an event description provided by the College. The writers shared several poems from their personal poetry collections — Asghar read from her 2018 collection “If They Come For Us: Poems,” while Elhillo read from “Girls That Never Die,” her upcoming collection slated for publication next July.
During the Q&A session that followed, Asghar and Elhillo discussed a variety of topics, including creative practices, literary inspirations and their collaborative writing process.
“I have the privilege [to] get to read [Elhillo]’s poems before the world does,” Asghar said. “We have an understanding of each other’s work that’s really deep.”
“Everything I learned was taught by another poet,” Elhillo said. “Community is what made me a poet and kept me a poet.”